Strange Game (Part 1)

After the other two vanished into the shadows of the buildings, Astinno had thought he would feel a paralyzing fear. But that was not the case.

Truth be told, he had never truly been alone, but this time was different.

The Calculator found a suitable hiding place in a mine tunnel within the cavern that had been blasted open by a huge hole. When Soul Drinker and Nightblade clashed, he took advantage of the chaos to leave that tumultuous place. Things had developed far beyond what he had imagined, and he needed to think carefully about exactly

where things had gone wrong.

Or perhaps Hannibal's true intentions. The bishop of the Wendigo Church had become increasingly unfathomable in his eyes. Every coincidence seemed to be strung together by an invisible thread. But was that man the one weaving it?

He was not sure, but escaping quickly was the most urgent matter.

The tamed detection rats crawled around him, carefully sniffing every corner and inspecting the holes and wide-open mine passages.

His last two detection spirits watched the open area at the cavern entrance, but it was already completely empty.

In a corner formed by heaps of collapsed rocks, the Wizard sat cross-legged and summoned the structural map of the entire mine into his mind.

All those maps were stored in his own memory pool. This had long been his habit—if information existed, he had to obtain it.

He was not a Wizard particularly skilled at combat. His strength lay in memory, in linking everything together in clusters. Whether images, text, or language, he could organize those fragmented pieces of information into something that could be understood and read.

That was why people called him the Calculator.

In his view, any information could prove useful. This moment was proof enough.

He